Sounds crazy? Arts and crafts for kids, those fun activities that so many preschools do throughout the year? How sinister can they be? Seems that they can either be fun activities or just plain harmless.

I guess it depends on how you define harmless.

In a good preschool classroom, one that is developmentally in tune with the kids, all activities should be geared towards certain major goals.

These goals for the most part should be helping children grow and learn basic skills that they will need for the school years ahead of them.

I’m not talking about things like the three R’s ( reading, writing and arithmetic).

I am talking about things like helping them develop good self esteem, problem solving skills, creative thinking, motor coordination, skills that will help them navigate the big, wide world out there.

So where does college come into this and how can getting into college have anything to do with how kids do arts and crafts in preschool.

Using just one of the skills “problem solving”, let’s analyze a typical arts and crafts for kids activity in a preschool classroom.

The teacher decides on a project. She figures out what the children will make, prepares the materials and instructs the children exactly what to do.

Now if our goal in the preschool classroom is to get children to think for themselves and to solve problems….what did this activity accomplish?

The teacher thought of the idea. She prepared the materials and the children copied exactly what she told them to do. Like robots.

What a wasted opportunity.

Arts and crafts for kids is a golden opportunity for children to learn to solve their own problems, figure out out to make something and create it on their own.

And now here’s where college comes in.

Basic skills are what they say they are, basic. This means skills are acquired at a very young age and this is where children get their abilities and problem solving skills, the attributes so prized by so many college institutions today.

So don’t think that traditional arts and crafts for kids is so harmless when we are encouraging our children to act like robots and depriving them of so many wonderful opportunities to think and solve problems on their own. Colleges are looking for young adults who can think on their own, make decisions and solve problems, not robots.

When you look back to so many arts and crafts activities that are being done in so many preschool classrooms you can understand why these kids may have a hard time getting into the college of their choice so many years down the road.

Preschool teachers are so much better off working on art activities that encourage

thinking and problem solving, thereby helping children gain some basic vital skills for life. Children need Smart Art .….. all explained and clearly laid out in www.smartartforpreschool.com

Do these collages of flowers look like the children all copied a teachers model or they used their own thinking skills to create their own flowers?